Designing a Longboard Brand

Let’s just call the customer Mr. Confidential for now, but I assure you, this is completely real. We’ve set up the significant distribution on this deal and we’re working to come up with ideas. Lots of ideas. But our ideas aren’t good enough! We need your help in getting the ball rolling on some new paradigms, and to give us feedback on the designs people suggest while responding to this post.

What We Need From You

Design Ideas – comment on this post or send ideas to tparlette.hba2011@ivey.ca

Design Opinions – indicate your interest in evaluating ideas

Designs – Do you have a design that would work perfectly? Read on!

Longboarders at Queens Park, Toronto

What’s Important:

Safety

A great ride

Something that’s differentiated, that people will want ‘just cause’

Undeniably cool looking products

Your creativity!

We Can Control:

Deck Shape– Don’t be fooled by the picture above, we aren’t stuck with a pintail shape.

Materials– We will likely be working with moulded & cut plywood, unless you can convince us otherwise.

Components

Graphics on the back

Wood Colour

Grip-Tape Placement & Cut

Target Market Insights

Males are traditionally 75% of the end-users, and females 25%

(That means that likely 75% or more of skater parents are Dads)

Parents – Christmas Shopping for youth aged 9- 14

Parents – Christmas Shopping for youth aged 15- 19

Parents – Christmas Shopping for youth aged 19- 24

*** Scroll down for Timeline

Skater Dad Enjoys a Day of Longboarding with his Son.

Timeline:

Ideation- Internal Ideas:Work out internal costs & constraints, try to gauge what the various stakeholders think they want.Week 1: August 25th – August 31th. Ideation- External Ideas: Get forum input, artistic community ideas, blog & stumble upon input. September 1st 2011 – Septeber 6th 2011Design Selection & Development: Share responses & submissions and ask the communities for feedback and preferences.
Week 4: September 7th 2011 – September 14th 2011Design Finalization: Choose final designs and submit them to our manufacturing partners to be turned into official SKUs with manufacturing that can be scaled to demand.
September 14th – October 1st

Product Launch:Mid October 2011 – The earliest that product will be available for sale.

And you may be wondering, “why would you design a longboard brand to launch in the winter?” Simple! We’re making it a longboarder’s Christmas this year! Ho ho hope to hear your ideas 🙂